Category SEA LIFE

Harvard researchers 3D printed an autonomous robot that demonstrates the advantages of soft robots. Just like an octopus, the robot is strong and dexterous enough to grasp objects.

Lori Sanders/Harvard University

Close your eyes, and picture a robot. It’s probably hard and angular, with jerky movements that have inspired dancers for decades. But robots can also be flexible, squishy, and graceful. Researchers at Harvard have created the first autonomous robot that is completely soft. Its design is inspired by the octopus — a creature that is known for its strength and dexterity.

The octopus’s qualities are ideal for modern robotics, which require more flexibility than the hulky machines that have dominated industrial settings for more than half a century...

Trying to get some excellent drone footage from the water, this quadcopter suddenly crashes into a wave and sinks to the ocean floor. The camera continues to roll capturing some amazing footage of fish.

Chief Joe Bailey sends up his Phantom drone, which can hover at over 100 feet above the ocean, to confirm in real time whether there are sharks in the area. The drone’s on-board camera can spot a shark’s tell-tale shadow from far away, allowing Chief Bailey to move his waterborne team in for a closer look. Chief Bailey will then make an assessment on whether to close the beach based on...

Starting in April 2011, the European Union CoCoRo (Collective Cognitive Robots) research consortium has been developing three varieties of autonomous underwater robots that school together like fish. By doing so, the little bots can share and learn from each others’ “knowledge” of their environment, acting as a collective cognitive system that’s smarter than any one of its individual parts.

The robots communicate with one another via built-in flashing LEDs, using onboard electronics such as computer vision systems, compasses and accelerometers to find their way around aquatic environments.

Utilizing an algorithm inspired by the clustering behavior of bees (not fish!), they can seek out others of their kind and then settle together around one central base location, becoming aware of the...

When you inflate a balloon and then release it without tying the valve shut, it certainly shoots away quickly. Octopi utilize the same basic principle, although they suck in and then rapidly expel water. An international team of scientists have now replicated that system in a soft-bodied miniature underwater vehicle, which could pave the way for very quickly-accelerating full-size submersibles.

The 30-cm (11.8-in)-long model was created by researchers from the University of Southampton, MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

It features a rigid 3D-printed polycarbonate skeleton, which is mostly covered by an outer elastic balloon-type envelope. Water is pumped into that balloon by an external pump, inflating it...

THIS AUTOSUB DRONE SCANS THE DEEP OCEANS TO IDENTIFY LIVING THINGS IN THE OCEAN DEPTS

Curious about what’s living on the deep sea floor? Well, the Autosub6000 AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) is helping us find out. Led by Dr. Kirsty Morris, a team at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has equipped one of the unmanned submarines with a high-resolution photographic system. As a result, it’s claimed to be far more effective at identifying deep-sea life than the usual approach of scientific trawling.

Previously developed by NOC engineers, the Autosub6000 autonomously travels untethered along preprogrammed deep-sea routes, continuously mapping the sea floor as it does so...

Should you be swimming in the ocean sometime soon and spot a shark-like dorsal fin cutting through the water towards you, just relax – it might simply be a military robot, that’s made to look like a shark. A US Navy team has recently been testing just such a device at its Joint Expeditionary Base East, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Known as the GhostSwimmer, the robot was developed by Boston Engineering as part of the Navy’s Silent NEMO project, which is aimed at creating nature-inspired unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

The GhostSwimmer is about five feet (1.5 m) long, weighs almost 100 lb (45 kg), and is described as mimicking the body shape and swinging-tail-driven swimming style of “a large fish.” It can operate in depths ranging from just 10 inches down to 300 feet (0...

Researchers from the Vancouver Aquarium and the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have begun using drones to keep tabs on endangered killer whales off the west coast of the continent. The technology is giving the researchers a fresh perspective on the well-being of the animals, and provides yet another example of how UAVs are giving rise to new means of conservation.

Armed with a custom-built marine hexacopter, the researchers were able to monitor the status of the protected Northern Resident killer whales and the endangered Southern Resident species.

The drone tracked the whales from an altitude of 100 ft (30 m), a distance that puts it out of the whale’s earshot, and collected ...